Orc Commander’s Claim (Fated Mates for the Bastion Monsters #1)

1. Layla

LAYLA

The hum of the Bastion doesn’t just vibrate through the floor; it lives in the stone, a relentless, thrumming heartbeat of magic and steel that rattles my very bones.

I smooth the silk of my ridiculous dress—a flowy, full-length gown that’s as impractical as it sounds—and try not to claw it off my skin. It’s too soft. Too luxurious against my fingertips, which are still calloused from my life in the Wastes.

“Just breathe,” I whisper under my breath.

Beside me, Luna is trembling. Not a shiver, but a full-body quake that makes her teeth clatter. She looks like a broken bird, fragile and hollowed out by the terror of another Lineage Lottery.

“I can’t keep doing this every week, Layla,” she chokes out, her eyes darting to the dais. “I can’t.”

I grip her hand hard enough to get her attention. “You can. You will.”

Because the alternative is outside the Bastion. And it isn’t pretty.

Daring a glance at the massive, shimmering shield overhead that separates our gilded cage from the hellscape outside, I eye the Gray. It roils against the magic that keeps us safe, a desolate sight of ash and death. Sulfur seems to coat my tongue, although I know it’s a phantom feeling from before.

Don’t think of her. Not here. Not now.

The lottery drum spins on the dais, its brass teeth clicking with each rotation.

Every seven days, it’s the same ritual. Names are pulled from the drum to match human women with whatever beasts have gone into rut that week.

The number changes. Sometimes one name is called.

Sometimes ten. We never know until the drawing starts.

Luna has survived sixty-three of these drawings. I know because she keeps count under her cot. I saw the tally marks when I first arrived, rows and rows of thin white lines scratched into the stone floor. Sixty-three weeks of holding her breath while that drum spins. No wonder her hands shake.

“At least the odds don’t get worse,” she whispers, her voice barely audible beneath the murmur of the crowd pressing in around us. “For every name that gets pulled, one or more new arrivals go back in. But mine’s always in there and is bound to be picked someday.”

“So is mine.” I’ve only been in the Bastion for sixteen days, but my name went into that drum shortly after I stumbled through the intake gate, half-dead from dehydration, still covered in the ash that buried my sister, Eloise.

Luna looks at me, and I see recognition in her eyes. She’s seen the same hollow expression on dozens of new arrivals, people who clawed their way through the Gray only to find that salvation comes with its own teeth.

“You still dream about her,” Luna says. It isn’t a question.

My jaw tightens. Every night. Her hand slipping from mine as the ash storm swallowed her whole, her scream cut short by the toxic wind that stole her breath and ended her life.

We were three hundred feet from the Bastion gates.

Three hundred feet from safety. She was the one who knew the way, who navigated us through the dead cities and the pockets of poison air that burns your lungs.

“She got me to safety,” I say, the words hard to form. “That’s what I hold onto.”

“Hold onto it tight.” Luna’s grip on my hand shifts, her fingers lacing through mine. “Because in about thirty seconds, that drum’s going to stop, and one of our names might be called.”

The clicking slows.

Around us, over a thousand women hold their breath.

A gong sounds. A deep, vibrating groan that silences those of us who are packed into the Great Hall.

The High Council emerges from the shadows at the back of the stage—six figures representing the monsters who live and work in the Bastion.

They arrange themselves in a line, holding court over the women who have made a bitter bargain.

For safety from the Wastes, we have agreed to become breeders, helping the monsters who passed through the torn Veil grow their population.

Vareth, the High Fae presiding over the ceremony, steps forward.

He looks bored, as if sentencing us to become breeding stock for monsters is a tedious chore that interrupts his morning wine.

His pale skin gleams under the harsh lights, and his eyes—cold, ancient pools of indifference—sweep over us.

“Candidates,” Vareth purrs, his voice sliding over the crowd. “We will be choosing three females this morning. The Lottery begins.”

The drum starts to spin again. Clack. Clack. Clack.

My heart thunders in response, beating for retreat.

Please. Whatever gods are left in this forsaken world, please.

The machine stops with a groan. Vareth reaches in, his movements agonizingly slow. He plucks a white capsule from the pile and cracks it open, letting the paper unfurl between his long, thin fingers.

“Sera Whitfield.”

A ripple passes through the crowd. Somewhere to my left, a woman steps forward and cries out before she is led away to pay her debt to the Bastion. She’s young and hollow-eyed, her expression already resigned to her fate.

The drum spins again. Clack. Clack. Clack.

When it stops, Vareth draws a second capsule and cracks it open.

“Mira Dalton.”

This woman is older, though still within reproductive age, and steadier on her feet. She walks with her chin raised, her jaw locked tight. She says nothing as she follows the path Sera Whitfield took.

Two down. One more to go.

The drum spins a final time, and the sound grates on my jangled nerves. Every clack is a countdown. Every rotation shaves another layer off my composure.

Once again, when it stops, Vareth reaches in. His fingers hover over the remaining capsules, as if savoring the moment. He selects one and cracks it open.

“Luna Vance.”

I gasp. But beside me, Luna doesn’t make a sound. She just folds. Her knees hit the floor with a sickening crunch, and the air rushes out of her lungs in a silent scream.

“No.” The word is a jagged shard of glass in my throat.

“Luna Vance,” Vareth repeats, a sneer curling his lip. “Present yourself, female.”

Two guards with long horns that could gut a man emerge from the shadows of the dais. They lumber down the steps with the heavy, stomping gait of executioners. They aren’t coming to help Luna. They’re coming to enforce the Lottery rules.

I look at my terrified friend. Then at the smug, bored face of Vareth on the stage.

And I snap. I don’t think, just move.

Placing my hands on the heavy stone pedestal beside me, a useless, decorative thing holding a vase of magical flowers that shouldn’t even exist, I shove with everything I have.

CRASH!

The sound reverberates around the Great Hall, and pieces of white stone scatter across the floor.

“Run, Luna!” I hiss, the sound tearing my throat raw. “Run!”

Luna scrambles on hands and knees, disappearing into the press of bodies that surges away from the wreckage of the pedestal.

The guards will find her eventually; nobody escapes the Lottery when their name is called.

But I’ve bought her a few hours to come to terms with being chosen. It’s all I can give her.

The guards don’t chase after Luna, they lunge for me.

I duck under the first one’s reach, feel the wind of his claws slice the air above my scalp.

The second one catches a fistful of my dress and yanks.

Silk rips. I spin, bare shoulder exposed, and drive my elbow into the soft spot beneath his jaw.

He grunts, more annoyed than hurt, and backhands me across the face, splitting my lip.

My vision whites out. I hit the floor, tasting copper.

The Great Hall is pandemonium. Female screams echo against the vaulted ceiling, amplifying the sound as bodies push and shove to get clear of the commotion. Vareth’s magically projected voice cuts through the din, sharp and venomous, barking orders I can’t parse through the ringing in my skull.

Then the air changes.

It thickens. Grows hot. Pressing against my skin like the blast of a furnace door that’s cracked open. The smell hits next. Musky and warm and deliciously earthy.

The screaming stops. Not gradually. Abruptly. And a shadow swallows the light above me.

I’m still on the floor, cheek pressed to cold stone, when I crane my neck upward. Then further up. Past legs that look like columns wrapped in worn leather. Past a torso as wide as the pedestal I toppled, and muscled arms that could squash my head like a grape.

It’s Krog. The Bastion’s High Commander.

The giant orc stands over me, and his presence feels like a crushing pressure, a gravitational shift that steals the oxygen from my lungs and replaces it with the primal, marrow-deep certainty that I’m in serious trouble.

His face is a fierce landscape. A heavy brow ridge casts his eyes in permanent shadow.

Amber irises, bright and predatory, with vertical pupils that dilate as they lock onto me.

Two tusks jut from his lower jaw, one chipped at the tip.

His skin is the color of dark moss, stretched over a muscled body that I’d find impressive if I wasn’t preoccupied with my impending doom.

He looks at the two guards without speaking. Doesn’t need to. They back away from me, yielding to him.

Then his hand closes around my upper arm. His fingers are iron bands that could snap my bones. The heat of his palm sears through my skin, an invisible brand. My feet leave the ground for a full second before he sets me upright with a jolt that rattles my teeth.

I’m standing. Barely. My knees are weak, my lip is bleeding, and my face throbs where the guard struck me. This creature still hasn’t let go.

“Commander Krog.” Vareth’s voice sounds from the dais, stripped of its earlier boredom. Anger is there now. “This female has disrupted a sanctioned Lottery. She will be processed for Recycling.”

Recycling.

The word punches me in the gut. I know what Recycling means. They don’t kill you and put your remains in the compost bin. They open a seam in the Bastion’s shield wall and shove you back into the Wastes, into the Gray.

No supplies. No weapons. Just you and whatever is hungry enough to find you first.

Eloise’s face flashes before my eyes. Skin raw, lungs rattling, the Wastes eating her alive while I held her hand and begged her to hold on.

Vareth descends from the dais, flanked by a pair of Fae enforcers in gleaming silver. “Release the female, Commander. She falls under Council jurisdiction.”

The sound that comes from Krog’s chest isn’t a word. It is a low-frequency vibration, a rumbly growl that bypasses my ears entirely and resonates in my chest. My ribs ache from it, and I swear the enchanted sconces along the walls flicker.

“Commander’s Right.”

Two words. That’s all. His voice is gravel dragged across bedrock, deep enough to make the stone floor hum in sympathy.

Vareth goes absolutely still. The ancient Fae doesn’t yield.

Ever. I’ve heard of him ordering the Recycling of women who spoke out of turn, the execution of monsters for stepping out of line.

But surprise flickers across his perfect, pale features.

Or maybe it’s shock. His eyes dart from Krog to me and back again, and I watch him weigh whatever power play is happening here.

The silver-clad enforcers halt mid-step, looking to Vareth for direction he doesn’t give.

“That right has never been invoked here,” Vareth says, his voice carefully neutral.

“Commander’s Right.” The orc repeats it, louder now. A decree, not a request.

“Noted,” the High Fae bites out. He turns on his heel and sweeps back to the dais without another word, but his spine is rigid with what I assume is barely contained fury.

Krog moves. He doesn’t drag me so much as carry me forward by the arm, my feet scrambling to match his stride. Each of his steps covers three of mine. The crowd of women lets us through, their eyes wide, mouths covered.

We leave the Great Hall, walking down a dark corridor lit by pulsing blue veins of magic until we reach the outside and follow a winding path through the trees. When we arrive at tall iron gates, they open without being told.

Inside the gates is a small courtyard and beyond that is a thick wooden door that leads to what I assume is Krog’s home.

Once inside, he releases me. I stumble, catching myself against a wall.

Even though I’m terrified and adrenaline is coursing through my veins, my stupid, treacherous mouth opens before my brain can stop it.

“So, what now?” I spin to face him as every survival instinct I have screams at me to shut the hell up. “You planning to Recycle me yourself, or do you just get off on scaring the shit out of humans?”

Those amber eyes narrow, their pupils turning to slits. His head tilts, just slightly, like a predator sizing up its prey.

I’ve just made a very stupid mistake.

But I’ll be damned if I’m going to cower.